I’ve told you previously that music plays an important part in my life and always has.  This is a music post, so those of you looking for Civil War stuff won’t find it here.

I’ve also lamented the apparent lack of musical talent in many of today’s popular acts.  Finally, there’s been the “bimboizing” of pop music with the proliferation of air headed morons like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, both of whom appear to have the overwhelming majority of their talent in their bras.  Most recently, the ultimate air headed bimbo, Paris Hilton, has released an album, as somebody persuaded her that (a) she can sing and (b) anyone gives a damn. 

To borrow a line once used to describe Bruce Springsteen, I have seen the future, and her name is KT Tunstall.

I am one of those people who can’t concentrate in a silent room.  Consequently, I listen to the radio streaming via the web all day while at work.  On a visit to Susan’s brother a couple of years ago, I discovered KFOG, a terrific Bay Area station.  I was even more pleased to find that KFOG streams on the web, so I listen to it pretty much all day (although there are times when I listen to Jimmy Buffett’s Radio Margaritaville). 

Back in January, KFOG started playing a song called “Big Black Horse and a Cherry Tree” by some unknown singer.  I really liked the song, so I started paying attention.  The artist who wrote and performed it is named KT Tunstall.  Since then, her first album was released in the U. S., and a second song, titled “Suddenly I See” was released as a single, and has gotten a lot of airplay.  It was the song played during the opening scenes of the recent movie The Devil Wears Prada. 

KT is from Scotland.  She plays the guitar, the piano, and the drums.  She’s been known to be a one-woman band–her performance on the Today show back in the early spring proved that. She writes all of her own stuff, and she can REALLY sing.  Imagine Sheryl Crow with a Scots accent and a big attitude, and you get a very good idea of what we’re talking about here.

Susan and I went to see her in concert  last night.  It’s her first true U. S. tour, and she played in a real dump.  However, we were there for the music and not for the venue.  And let me tell you–I can’t say enough good things about her or her performance.  She played four different guitars over the course of the show, including a beautiful Les Paul that was as big as she is, the piano, and the drums.  She has a fabulous band behind her–her bass player also played the cello on a couple of songs, and it was a great show.

For me, a real indicator of how good a performer is is whether they sound as good live as they do in the studio–and no, I don’t mean lipsynching like Ashlee Simpson, either–and KT sounds EXACTLY the same live as she does in the studio, meaning that her voice is that good that she requires no mixing.  It was very impressive.  She did several songs from her new upcoming acoustic album, and they were all terrific.  She told the crowd that the entire album was recorded in a single day, which is quite impressive.

She is the anti-Britney, to say the very least.  I just can’t say enough good things about her and her music.  If you get the chance to enjoy her and her music, please indulge yourself.  You won’t be disappointed.   

Continue reading

Not in Memorium but in Defense was launched early this summer to chronicle the research of a Harvard student working toward her senior thesis. The research has apparently been completed and the thesis is apparently underway, as there hasn’t been a post since July 19. In other words, the last post was ten weeks ago, so presumably that means that the blog has been abandoned. Consequently, I am deleting the link. If I hear that it’s come back on line at some point, I will add it back in again, but for now, there’s no reason to keep it as an actitve link.

Continue reading

Since posting about the unscientific poll on favorite Civil War battlefields on the CWDG web site last night, we’ve had 15 more votes, presumably from some of you.

Here are the updated results, as of 7:51 PM on Monday, October 2:

Antietam 9.64% (8)
Chancellorsville 1.20% (1)
Chickamauga 9.64% (8)
Fredericksburg 3.61% (3)
Gettysburg 55.42% (46)
Petersburg 1.20% (1)
Richmond 0.00% (0)
Shiloh 3.61% (3)
Vicksburg 3.61% (3)
Other–tell us what! 12.05% (10)

Interestingly, the percentage of folks voting for Gettysburg has dropped slightly, but it still remains the overwhelming favorite. I doubt that will change.

I will continue to update the results here until we close the poll in a few weeks.

Continue reading

Reader Jack Dempsey posted this comment to my discussion of my trip to Detroit last week:

For someone who tries to read your blog regularly, and would have enjoyed attending this event, I regret there was no prior notice on this blogsite as in other cases, at least to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps this could serve as a suggestion that authors attempt consistently to inform their readership of upcoming appearances. Thanks.

Point taken. It just never occurred to me to announce the date here, and I apologize for not doing so. Jack, I apologize. It would have been nice to meet you.

Consequently, I think that I will see about adding a section to this site which contains my scheduled appearances/talks. In the meantime, the only other even that I have scheduled at present is a joint appearance with J. D. at the Gettysburg Civil War Roundtable on October 26, where we will be discussing Plenty of Blame to Go Around.

Continue reading

We regularly run polls on the Civil War Discussion Group. We probably don’t change them often enough, but we come up with some interesting and sometimes unexpected results. Other results are precisely what I expect. What makes these unscientific polls interesting is seeing the results that come in and the comparing them wtih my expectations. Some are easier to predict than others.

The current poll, which has now been up for about a month, is completely unscientific. The question is a simple one: what’s your favorite Civil War battlefield. There are a number of specific choices, and there is also one that says “other”. Anyone wanting to respond to the poll simply has to click the button and the vote registers. To date, we’ve had 68 votes, which is actually significantly less than what I would expected when we posted the poll. Here are the results to date:

Antietam 10.29% (7)
Chancellorsville 1.47% (1)
Chickamauga 8.82% (6)
Fredericksburg 2.94% (2)
Gettysburg 61.76% (42)
Petersburg 1.47% (1)
Richmond 0.00% (0)
Shiloh 2.94% (2)
Vicksburg 2.94% (2)
Other–tell us what! 7.35% (5)

42 of the 68 votes cast to date have been for Gettysburg. Nothing else even remotely comes close. The next highest number of votes is 7. I fully expected Gettysburg to come out on top, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so lopsided. I was the vote for Chancellorsville, by the way.

So, even though it’s an informal poll, it still substantiates what I’ve always know, which is that Gettysburg seems to occupy a disproportionate place in the hearts and minds of Civil War afficionados. I have always believed that the emphasis of Gettysburg is misdirected, and that there were other battles that were just as important, if not more so. However, few seem capture the public’s attention with anything even remotely resembling the fascination with which people hold Gettysburg.

Continue reading

Most of my regular readers know that I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. I grew up a fanatical fan of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams. I stopped caring about the NBA when Julius Erving retired, and still don’t care. However, I remain a die-hard, life-long fan of the Phillies, Eagles, and Flyers. Every time my team has a game, I always skip my casino games at DaisySlots and start betting on my team to win or lose. I don’t really care.

For the City of Philadelphia, 1980 was nearly the greatest in the history of professional sports. We came within a hair of having all four professional championships in Philadelphia that year. The Phillies won the the World Series. The 1980-81 Eagles lost in the Super Bowl. The 1980 Flyers had a still unequalled 35 game unbeaten streak that year, and lost to the Islanders in the Stanley Cup finals. The 76’ers lost to the Lakers in the NBA finals in 1980. And, just for good measure, the University of Pennsylvania made it to the Final Four in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Unfortunately, rooting for Philadelphia’s professional sports franchises is an exercise in frustration. Although they have lost the Super Bowl twice during my life, the last time that the Eagles won an NFL championship was about three months before I was born in March 1961. The Flyers have won the Stanley Cup twice in my lifetime, but that was in 1974 and 1975. It’s been 31 years since the last time. The 76’ers won the NBA title in 1967 and 1983, but they also posted THE mark for futility in professional sports, going 9-73 in 1973.

The Phillies have been to the World Series five times (1915, 1950, 1980, 1983, and 1993) in the nearly 110 year history of the franchise. Their record is 1-4 in the Fall Classic. I was 19 when they won it all in 1980, something I will remember clearly for the rest of my life. It was one of the happiest moments of my young life. They have not been in post season play since the 1993 World Series.

Even though the only thing consistent about their play this year was their inconsistency, I genuinely believed that they had a real shot at making the playoffs this year as the National League wild card. They put on a concerted push during the second half of the season and were in the race until today, with a record of 85-76. That with crappy starting pitching and a lot of turmoil on the team, with wholesale changes being made mid-season. However, they have two of the finest young players in the game–Ryan Howard (58 HR’s and 149 RBI in his first full season in the majors) and Chase Utley (leads the NL in hits, hitting .312, and with his second straight season of 100+ RBI)–and an excellent 22 year old left handed starting pitching prospect named Cole Hamels.

However, the Phils were eliminated today. They now have no chance at all of making the post season, and their season ends tomorrow. This now makes 13 years since the last time that they competed in the post season. It’s going to be a long winter, yet another year of frustration and foiled hopes.

I think I will root for the Tigers to win it all this year. They’re a team largely built from within without much in the way of expensive free agents, and they’ve had quite a run; two or three years ago, they were, without doubt, THE worst team in the major leagues, and now they’ve won 95 games so far this year. And rooting for them is consistent with my policy of rooting for whoever plays the New York Yankees (sorry, Michael).

Nevertheless, it’s going to be another long and frustrating winter waiting for opening day and yet another chance to have my heart broken by this team that has broken it so many other times over the last 45 years.

Continue reading

Civil Warriors is a joint blog run by some of the best of the younger generation of Civil War historians, including Mark Grimsley, Brooks Simpson, and Steven Woodworth.

Ethan Rafuse has also joined the Civil Warriors team. For those not familiar with Ethan, he’s written several excellent books on the war, including an outstanding book on George B. McClellan’s role in the Civil War. Ethan is an Army historian whose work I really admire. He will make an excellent addition to the team, and I look forward to his contributions to the team blog.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Ethan.

Continue reading

I keep talking about the Dahlgren manuscript, so tonight I thought I would give an update on the status of the Rush’s Lancers manuscript. The book is slated for release in November, meaning that there isn’t much time left to get the thing done.

My copy editor has forwarded me the marked up version of the manuscript over the past several days, and I have spent the last two nights reviewing her edits and then answering her queries. Fortunately, she is quite knowledgeable–she knows northern Virginia and lives in Philadelphia, meaning that most of the sits are familiar to her, as are many of the individuals mentioned in the book. She’s done an excellent job of it, and I completed my work on it this evening. All that remains for me to do is to proof the page galleys once the manuscript has been laid out.

That means that doing the page layout is about all that’s left to be done and then the book is ready to go to the printer. I’ve been working on this project since 1994. It’s been an incredibly long haul, with lots of twists and turns, and it’s going to be an incredible thing finally seeing a finished product in print.

Continue reading

Perhaps I spoke a eulogy for the Hunterstown battlefield too soon.

From today’s edition of the Hanover Evening Sun newspaper:

Hunterstown, Fairfield part of Gettysburg Battle
By MEG BERNHARDT
Evening Sun Reporter

“I think it’s very good for the preservation community who has been concerned about sites at Fairfield and Hunterstown because now the American Battlefield Protection Program is now available to help them with planning, interpreting and protecting of the sites,” Lawhon said.

This doesn’t mean that the battlefields will be saved, but it’s a first step, and perhaps they can, in fact, be saved after all. Stay tuned.

Continue reading

The Detroit metropolitan area is huge. So huge, in fact, that there are five different Civil War Roundtables, if you count the one in Ann Arbor. Months ago, I was invited to speak to the Israel B. Richardson CWRT, which is on the northeast side of town. The CWRT meets in a Barnes & Noble store, and it’s the largest B&N store I’ve ever seen. I’m told that it used to be bowling alley.

I agreed to accept the invitation largely because Susan’s got family in the Detroit suburbs. Her aunt and uncle live in Franklin township, and she has cousins in Bloomfield Hills. We figured we could tie a visit with them to the talk. Unfortunately, they weren’t available, and we couldn’t find anyone to watch the dogs. That meant driving 4+ hours to Detroit, doing the presentation and the book signing, and then driving 4+ hours home to Columbus, all in one evening. I had a 7:30 breakfast meeting yesterday, so it was a VERY long day.

However, there were about 75 people in attendance, and the B&N customer relations person did a fabulous job of it. She had multiple copies of all of my books but one there. There were probably 40 copies of the Stuart’s Ride book, and I signed about 30 books over the course of the signing. One fellow who came arrived toting his copies of all twelve of my books for me to sign, which I did before the start of the meeting. Paul Taylor, who regularly comments here on the blog, also came. It was really nice getting to meet him in person.

I did my Stuart’s Ride talk for them. I enjoy that talk because I can do it almost completely without notes. I use the notes only to read the operative orders for the raid, and then work off the cuff. I get a charge out of that, and the audiences always seem amazed that I can do a talk like that without notes. From my perspective, the interesting thing is that because I do it off the cuff, no two talks are ever the same. That helps me to keep it fresh and keeps it interesting for me.

We finally got home after 1 AM. Like I said, it made for an incredibly long day. Fortunately, Susan came with me, so that we could split up the driving. Unfortunately, the consequence is that we’re both exhausted tonight. I could use some sleep.

Continue reading